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If Nintendo sticks to this framework there could easily be a clone of Yuzu or Ryujinx developed in the open again.
So, tl;dr:
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No chipping consoles (bypassing the onboard anti-piracy a console has to allow it to play pirate content) - this seems unrelated to emulators tbh.
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No linking to pirate content. Obviously.
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No including the operating system that runs on the console in the emulator. Software on the emulator has to be completely its own thing.
Assuming emulator devs avoid these things, they might be left alone (but probably not). The fact that some older emulators have survived without their creators ever being served legal notices makes me think that there actually is a specific tightrope you can walk to avoid legal attacks by Nintendo though.
This just sounds like emulator Devs will do what they’ve already done for the BIOS, which isn’t all that different. it’s just going to make the initial setup more annoying.
Yeah exactly.
I think the DMCA has a broad provision against bypassing anti-piracy that applies to software, the argument against the Switch emulators was that they could do this even though they didn’t come with the necessary .keys file.
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I often wonder if Nintendo’s uncompromising stance on IP rights is actually a net benefit to their bottom line. It could be a factor in their commercial success and brand strength, but it’s also entirely possible that they’re successful despite it, and they’re just dragging their brand equity down by being needlessly hostile to their own customers. I get not wanting someone to make money off your IP, but they send lawyers over the most petty bullshit.
The worst is that none of their efforts stop actual piracy. People are 100% going to emulate their games no matter what they do. Their weird litigation fetish just shuts down interesting fan-made projects that only appeal to people who are already paying customers. Maybe it does have the net-effect of increasing their margins or creating more scarcity or whatever, but it seems petty and nonsensical.
All property rights are stupid, but intellectual property is the stupidest.
intellectual property is also weird as if you don’t defend it (see: serve cease and desists etc) they are liable to lose the rights to them.
the level at which a company does this is entirely up to them though it seems
That’s mostly true of trademark rights, which do need to be actively enforced to some degree to maintain, but only to the extent that it prevents trademarks from becoming genericized. The extent to which Nintendo enforces its trademarks is arguably above and beyond the requirements for preventing genericization of a trademark. Independent fan-art intended for free distribution, for example, isn’t going to make Mario a public domain character.
Copyrights have no such requirement for enforcement, and companies can exercise as much discretion as they choose in enforcing copyright, including none at all (the concept of abandonware sort of falls in this category where things become de facto public domain by virtue of no one caring enough to enforce the copyright). Further, lots of companies have proactive policies that cover things like fan-made content, review content, streaming, etc. in order to establish what will be enforced and what won’t. Nintendo’s policy is to stop any unauthorized use or manipulation of any Nintendo IP, even if that use might meet legal standards, and they often overreach in their enforcement.
So yeah, they do have an obligation to enforce their trademarks in order to maintain them, but not necessarily to the degree that they do. They have no obligation to enforce copyright. In practice, it makes sense to put barriers in place to make it difficult for people to easily pirate or try to make money from your IP, but Nintendo’s approach is pretty much unique. As I said, I’m not sure if it benefits them, or if it’s just how they’ve always done things. I think there’s an interesting argument to be made that their brand strength and quality is allowing them to get away with being so litigious, rather than their litigiousness being a major factor in their success. If other game companies were as hostile as Nintendo, they would likely do more harm to their brand than would be worthwhile for whatever benefit they’d get on the other end, otherwise they’d all be doing what Nintendo is doing.
Isn’t this only the case for trademarks?
yes
They could so easily turn some of the coolest people in the gaming space into permanent customers if they had a Nintendo fan hall of fame. Have a recreation of Peach’s castle as a series of web pages on the Nintendo website. nintendo.com/halloffame/castle_entrance.html or something. Each room in the castle is for a different bit of outstanding contribution. Smash bros players, speed runners, and modders. Take Kaze Emanuar who recreated SM64’s source code and say “that was neat” and he would move heaven and earth for you. The project M team. Anyone who’s ever found how to do ACE in an old game. The people at GDQ. Point Crow and Small Ant.
These people FUCKING. LOVE. NINTENDO. and Nintendo FUCKING. HATES. THEM. They could be embraced, they could poach all the free advertising, game designers, and interest in their old library they could ever want. Nintendo would spend less money for more and make every happier by doing so. They must have some tax benefit for employing so many lawyers instead. You just get an intern to go into their twitch streams, banter a bit, donate 5 subs, and ask them to play Secret of Mana because you’re bringing back wii games on the Switch 2. They’ll make a video titled Nintendo BEGGED Me to Play Their Old Game and everybody will win.
Drives me up the wall that they don’t take this approach. There’s an argument that, in American IP law at least, you have to “protect your copyright” or you might lose it, but that could very easily be overcome by introducing a license agreement that any fan creator can attach to their game that clearly states that Nintendo’s IP belongs to Nintendo and that the fan work is purely the work of the fan and does not represent the opinions of blah blah you know the rest.
The way I see it this would be a “carrot” method of protecting their IP as opposed to their currently-preferred “stick” method. Encourage fan works! Celebrate them on your site! Maybe for the really good ones you can look at porting them to virtual console - we all know that virtual console is just an emulator running ROMs anyway, there’s no reason you couldn’t let anyone with a Nintendo Online subscription play Zelda with a randomizer or even something like Pokemon Crystal Clear (anything that doesn’t have non-Nintendo IP in it, basically).
TheDrink? Like Trunks? Witnessed.
You just made two fantastic points. I didn’t even think about how to circumvent the IP perils but it seems like it wouldn’t be that much effort. Almost certainly LESS lawyer hours. And that gets to the one comment your post raises for me: the carrot and the stick method aren’t 1:1. It would just take so much less effort to do a carrot method. Even if you had to interact with fans, maybe show up at a Smash tournament to kiss babies and pop champagne, you had to bother uploading ROMs to Nintendo online (and had to have a meeting about it first), and have a snarky twitter account then that is LESS effort than one sticky situation where Smash players throw a fit. You have to deal with big creators getting copystrikes on their accounts and making arguments with lawyers of their own less. You’re paying less in lawyer fees with no decrease in the fidelity of your IPs.
And then you can think about the benefits. Nobody is going to play an OoT randomizer instead of TotK. In fact, they’re going to be first in line. People in general like exposure. It’s general marketing practice that getting acquainted with Zelda makes them more likely to buy the big ticket item afterward. If it matters to you, when you do have to make a controversial final call (e.g. someone’s not listening to your requests) and it seems harsh, you’ll have some goodwill so people will take your side and give you the benefit of the doubt.
The stick method is the inferior method. There’s just no way it couldn’t be.
It would be an interesting and brave new world to see fan games on the VC.
Whether a failure or a success Nintendo has never once made a logical decision.
CEO once took a paycut rather than layoff staff. Happened years ago, and definitely doesn’t excuse the over-litigation.
And that CEO is dead now.
The wildest shit is that piracy can actually get a game more word of mouth and make a franchise more popular. People try a game they wouldn’t have otherwise and think “you know what, I might buy that actually.”
It like how movie and game corporations used to whine about Video Rental stores even though there are a ton of franchises that wouldn’t have been discovered without them.
It probably does work out for them because of how famous they are. I want to play a Nintendo game; I have the options of either emulating or buying a console. I would probably emulate so I don’t have to buy a whole new computer just to play Nintendo games. However if no emulators exist I’d be forced to buy a console. This wouldn’t work out for smaller companies who don’t have the kind of advertising and brand recognition of Nintendo, but I don’t think Nintendo has issues with people knowing about and wanting to play their games.
It would have to be. I mean, emulation is a key part of the console development toolchain - hell, Nintendo even maintained internal emulators developed by companies like Intelligent Systems for their consoles.
Does that mean they’ll fuck off and leave us pirates in peace now?
no they are just now admitting the obvious that VCRs aren’t illegal but they’re still coming for your home tapes
Death to Nintendogs
(ninten) Doh!
